LETTER OF THE WEEK

Michael Steele has to go

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Over the past few years, I’ve become increasingly upset at the way our Republican elected officials, and even our candidates, have portrayed themselves on Sunday shows and in other media appearances. Their responses to real issues were without passion and their statements continuously rang hollow. The GOP has always been right on the issues. We cut taxes on all income levels, have saved millions of jobs, sounded the alarm on the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mortgage crisis Democrats chose to ignore and, most of all, offered solutions on issues of national security as Democrats sat and twiddled their thumbs.

The problem was that none of this was being shown on TV. Media bias was largely to blame, but in equal proportion, so were the lackadaisical responses coming from our side. With that in mind, I had high hopes for Chairman Michael Steele when he was first elected. Watching the debate between the candidates for party chairman, Steele seemed alive, energetic and vivacious.

In the proceeding months, it was clear that we had a problem on our hands. The chairman of our party should not be someone who agrees with the radical leftist agenda of Barack Obama almost one-third of the time. The public face of our party should not be someone who lacks the wherewithal to identify, and then to staunchly denounce, the policies and agenda items that have increasingly become the hallmark of the radical left.

As time went on, Michael Steele increasingly showed himself to be clueless on policy, devoid of ideas and bereft of a competitive political philosophy – this at a time when Americans are clamoring for one. Most of all, his organizational skills, of primary importance to the position the party chairman is elected to fill, were shown to be all but nonexistent. As I watched on with dismay, I hoped against hope that Steele would grow into the job. Regrettably, this was not to be the case.

None of the above listed faults can come close to his latest misstep, that of downplaying our party’s standing and of deflating our morale with his outrageous prognostications on the 2010 race. That his comments were made in the very same week that the distressingly liberal Los Angeles Times admitted that the GOP is poised to regain control of the US House and possibly the Senate is troubling beyond words.

In the same interview, Chairman Steele also went to great lengths to attack every Republican within a 500-mile radius of Washington, D.C. These amateurish tactics would be sad and counterproductive if they were the statements of a 20-year-old political activist. When the chairman of a party makes them, they’re shameful beyond words. Chairman Steele, we have Democrats who are perfectly capable of attacking every single Republican while giving all but a free pass to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. They don’t need your help.

We are the Party of Everyday Americans, not of sophomoric political hacks. If Michael Steele is auditioning for a column of his own at the New York Times or for a position at some obscenely comical think tank, then he should not be using party resources or a position within our party to achieve those ignoble goals. Chairman Steele’s attack on our party’s morale is an affront to the American people – those who seek a clear and viable alternative to the insanity that is the hallmark of this administration, an administration Steele has coddled when his job was to oppose it.

For this reason above all else, I call upon Chairman Steele to end his hapless and lackluster reign at the helm of the Republican Party. I also call upon all Republican candidates to demand his resignation with equal resolve and certitude.

I don’t make this call lightly. Upon Michael Steele’s election as party chairman, I wrote a column praising his leadership style. As a columnist, I owe it to readers to clear that up. As a candidate, I stand to be affected by what passes for leadership under this chairman. Most importantly, as an American, I cannot stomach the ineptitude of a chairman whose words can aversely affect the fundraising efforts of the only party that stands in the way of radical socialism.

The Republican Party is the party of Ronald Reagan and of so many others who seek to preserve the American Way and the moral values upon which our great nation was founded and upon which its future success relies. The farce that has passed for leadership under this chairman must come to an end for our party to regain its standing as the true and rightful voice of the American people.